The Films of Werner Herzog.

I've been meaning to do this for awhile now but always found an excuse to put it off. No more. In this thread, I will (slowly) go through Herzog's filmography chronogically film-by-film (both shorts and features), offering brief synopses, personal thoughts, and screen captures, in the hope that I might turn more of you on to the work of the greatest living filmmaker and one of history's great artists. Hopefully this will be of interest to some of you and maybe we can get some discussion going.

Some quotes to get us started.



1962. Herakles [Heracles].
1964. Spiel im Sand [Game in the Sand].
1966. Die Beispiellose Verteidigung der Festung Deutschkreuz [The Unprecedented Defence of the Fortress Deutschkreuz].

Awesome.
I shall be tuning in regularly, as I've been meaning to get into his stuff.
Bad LT wailed so fucking hard.

Herakles [Heracles]. 1962. A ten minute short that Herzog made when he was 19 years old. The film is not exactly a narrative nor is it really a documentary. You could probably call it a mini film essay.

Herzog says, "Looking back on Herakles today, I find the film rather stupid and pointless, though at the time it was an important test for me. It taught me about editing together very diverse material that would not normally sit comfortably as a whole. For the film I took stock footage of an accident at Le Mans where something like eighty people died after fragments of a car flew into the spectators' stand, and inter-cut it with footage of bodybuilders, including Mr. Germany 1962. For me it was fascinating to edit material together that had such separate and individual lives. The film was some kind of an apprenticeship for me. I just felt it would be better to make a film than go to film school."

Indeed, there's little more to the film than that. Bodybuilders working out, staring at or standing in front of mirrors and giant posters of heavily muscled, heavily tanned men intercut with documentary footage of very different subjects. Periodically throughout the film, Herzog will freezeframe on a body builder and ask a question. For example, Will he clean the stable of Augias? And then he cuts to several shots of a garbage dump. Will he kill the Lernean Hydra? and cut to a long jammed up line of cars. Will he catch the Mares of Diomedes? cut to a racetrack and race car accidents. Will he fight against the birds of the Estinfalo? cut to military jets shooting missiles and dropping bombs. You get the idea.

There seems to be some connection here with Herzog's stated opinion of bodybuilders, "I detest the cult of bodybuilding, something I feel is a gross deviation. " The film suggests that these bodybuilders aren't great heroes like Hercules. Their muscles have no utility. They aren't going to accomplish any great feats for the betterment of mankind.



Herzog hints here at future thematic interests, like war and mad human pursuit, and already you have evidence of primary Herzogian traits, like the use of non-actors and documentary footage. There's even a few shots where the bodybuilders look right at the camera as though asking Herzog if they should continue posing. This will become a considerable element in Herzog's cinema through his entire career, holding shots so long that his documentary subjects "break character." I can imagine Herzog asking these poor men to work out for the camera and then never telling them to stop, so that they work themselves to exhaustion trying to appear strong for the film.

There's some amusing intercutting overall, but ultimately, as Herzog said, it's a rather stupid film that feels more like Herzog finding his way around filmmaking for the first time than any kind of cohesive artistic statement. Watch it if you have 10 minutes to spare (download link below), but it will likely contribute little to your knowledge of Herzog or your understanding of his themes.





Full short download.

He gets kudos for having Klaus Kinski in his earlier films and using the music of Ash Ra Temple.

Ambitious in an exciting way, Ogawa. Look forward to much more of it.

Do you mean Popol Vuh?

Spiel im Sand [Game in the Sand]. 1964. Short film. Not available to be seen. Apparently contains a scene where a chicken is buried in sand up to its neck.

From the indispensable Herzog on Herzog:

Yeah, sorry wrong Krautrock band.

Herzog and the late Kinski are among my favorite actors and directors. There are so many great films that were collaborations of two...even though they were infamous for their "artistic" dispositions and infamous for their fighting and disagreements. My Best "Fiend" is a movie abut their dysfunctional relationship.

Fitzcaraldo, Aguirre, the Wrath of God are two great films. Don't miss them.

Die Beispiellose Verteidigung der Festung Deutschkreuz [The Unprecedented Defence of the Fortress Deutschkreuz]. 1966. 15 minute short. Amusing irony in the title. More of a straight narrative than Herakles, though there's still no dialogue or sound except the score and an occasional sound effect and an almost constant voiceover narration.

The first shot is of grain blowing in the wind (an image Herzog will return to later in Kaspar Hauser) and over shots of the titular fortress a narrator gives a brief history, "The Mayor of Deutschkreuz admitted that all attempts had failed. Attempts to do something reasonable with the Deuschkreutz Castle. In other words, to make the castle regain reason again. Even the attempt to cultivate mushrooms in the cellars had been unsuccessful."

Once the title appears, the narrator seems to undergo a change to something more subjective and a touch insane, occasionally breaking into maniacle laughter and rambling about secret passages, princesses, countesses who bathe in blood, and war. There's a profound nonsense to much of the narration similar to the nonsense of other maddened characters in Herzog's later films, "The best thing is the nine-day week, because nine is easier to divide by five than by seven and nine days make more of an impression than seven. The greatest advantage is that there's no longer a Sunday. This is very important, because on that day no one would work. You see, this is just what the enemy is waiting for."



The short follows four young men who break into an abandoned fortress and, after rummaging about, find some guns and uniforms which they put on. At first they're just messing around but soon they're marching and running drills and crawling through the grass. They see a tractor and think it's a tank. They look through binoculars at farmers working in the field while radio chatter and gunfire play loudly on the soundtrack. They scramble for their guns and set up sandbag defenses and wait. It's a comical madness.

As the short goes on, it starts to look more and more like a war film. It's easy to forget that the soldiers started out as young men just goofing off. One of the soldiers gets tired of waiting for the enemy, throws his helmet down, and is subsequently placed in a wheelbarrow and tied up by the others. When no enemy attacks the fortress, the soldiers rush out to attack the town. The film ends on a freeze frame of the charging soldiers and the narrator's last line, "Even being defeated is better than nothing."



Herzog seems to have matured greatly between this film and his last and it shows a more serious attempt to tackle themes and ideas that he'll go on to explore more thoroughly throughout the rest of his career. It's still a rather clumsy work but there's a lot more to enjoy here than in his first short, most immediately in the photography which demonstrates early on Herzog's natural gift for composition and his capability with landscapes. Also we have the first evidence of Herzog's affinity for animals. A live baby bird that has fallen from its nest or has otherwise been abandoned. A crane perched atop a building. A scene where the men are chasing around and playing with a small mouse.

It's not a necessary film and it becomes even less so with the release of Signs of Life in 1968, which is pretty much an expanded (and much better) version of Deutschkreuz. For those interested, though, I've uploaded the film at the link below.



Full short download.

This is pretty sweet.

This AV Club interview makes this thread bump-worthy, as its creator may never show up again to revive it.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/werner-herzog,55154/

Interesting interview. I'm not exactly thrilled for the upcoming 'Cave of Forbidden Dreams' (Though I'm sure it will be at least interesting) but his next project is about people on Death Row and that sounds fascinating!

You hear "Warner Herzog is making a movie IN 3-D!" And you think, now i have seen everything. But if it's as good as the opening reviews i found have said (The Reader and Av Club itself) I would love to see it.

My friend here in London has told me not to miss it when it comes to the states.